Office building proposed at site of Old Town car wash

Nov. 28, 2012

Written by

A team of developers is considering replacing the Whistle Clean Car Wash in downtown Fort Collins with a three- to four-story office building.

Peter Kast of Realtec declined to name the development group until Monday, when a preliminary plan goes to the city’s planning office for a conceptual review.

According to city documents, the building at 243 N. College Ave. would likely be between 30,000 and 60,000 square feet and three or four stories. The project will be 50 percent leased prior to construction and would replace the car wash, he said.

The site has long been considered ripe for redevelopment. “There’s not a lot of space downtown,” Kast said. “At some point it makes sense for somebody to building something” at the site.

A couple different users are interested in taking at least half the building, Kast said, making the building financially feasible, he said. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t have at least that much committed.”

Developable land in Old Town Fort Collins is hard to come by making infill development critical, said Eric Holsapple, director of the Everitt Real Estate Center at Colorado State University. “As long as employment is going to grow, the population will grow and we will need to regenerate space,” he said. “We have to have infill development.”

Offices are a permitted use in the area but if any single story is larger than 25,000 square feet it will require planning and zoning board review, according to the city.

Monday’s conceptual review is open to the public. It begins at 9:30 in the city building department, 281 N. College, Conference Room A.

The Whistle Clean property had been considered by the Downtown Development Authority among a handful of potential homes for a year-round community marketplace but was eliminated because of physical constraints along U.S. Highway 287 (North College Avenue), said DDA Executive Director Matt Robenalt.

“The ability to integrate a farmers market and close down College Avenue would not be beneficial,” he said. The marketplace itself remains a concept the DDA is interested in, but it lacks capacity to fund it, Robenalt said.